Love, Life, and the lifestyle

I haven’t had to explain my situation of late.  When I do the hardest part for people to understand is why?  My girlfriend wrote Why Poly? Why Not? recently regarding this and I would like to expand on it a bit too.  Well more add my two cents about my thoughts and experiences.

I have always loved more than one women.  Not that we were fucking or anything, but I care for them.  Even when my old girlfriend came back into my life 20 years later I still cared for her.  Krystalla understood and accepted it.  This was before we even opened up our relationship.  The thing that most people keep asking is “How is that possible?”  Well the simple example I give is if you have kids, don’t you love them?  There reply is “Of course, but that is different.”  Exactly my point.

Love is not uniform or black and white.  Never has been.  That spark that you feel growing for someone evolves and transforms into what you feel is love.  The problem is that it is not tangible, simple, or something that you can show.  It is how you feel, and like everyone that I know, the way we feel can be on different levels.  You can’t just take love and show someone.  Love is something that can’t be easily explained.  With this lifestyle is one the biggest hurdles when trying to explain poly.  Although it is somewhat simpler to explain then swinging since it doesn’t involve love but more sex.

“How can you share your wife?” is the other biggest question I get.  My wife has her poly husband along with her bf (although more like poly now).  She was out on a date last week and had sex.  I knew she did when she came home but we didn’t have time to discuss.  Was I upset?  Of course not.  Envious a bit maybe, but she is her own woman.  I don’t own her, and she loves me much like she loves her other two men in her life.  To each other we are the rock, the grounding force, and if it wasn’t for her I don’t know if this would have even happened the way it did.  Yes she has fucked other men, but then again I have been with other women.  Heck she had my girlfriend come up from Chicago as a surprise for me and I spent every night with her while she visited.  After each time with my girlfriend I came back to her bed.  We are the primary, the first and only one.  The re connection is so important.

Of course with this relationship it still has that other side of the coin.  Jealous thoughts might run through my head at times.  Although because we understand each other we also understand why these thoughts happen.  Plus we talk, a lot.  We don’t hide anything which is the biggest factor in this.  You can not have these types of relationships and not talk.  Secrets can’t happen, and being up front about feelings, fears and concerns help the couple work through things that might in other situations cause problems.

Now the friends with benefit (fwb) is a whole different part of this.  I have never been good at picking women up, let alone having one night stands.  Guess this is why I find the friends first option works for me.  If by chance we have benefits great, but it doesn’t mean that it is always expected or happens when we get together.  I listen to their problems, what is happening in their lives, and even vent to them on occasion.  It is not love but a mutual affection for each other.  I care for each of them in different ways.  If by chance they find someone other than me that is long-term there is no impact on our relationship.  We maintain the friendship that we have, just no benefits.

The biggest thing that I had to work through was the dates.  Krystalla never dated before I met her.  So for her this was exciting.  She went out with her now poly boyfriend a few times.  Each date they did something different, and the time they were out got longer and longer.  Feeling envious about this each time they went out was common for me.  Understanding why I was envious allowed me to not go stir crazy.  I didn’t have that, although it was something I did when I was younger.  So the experience she is having I already did so many years ago.  My coffee dates were more a few hours and that was it.  Nothing more.  Dating also involves money which I have been focused on not spending.  Going out on a date can be pretty expensive.

I did my dating so long ago.  Didn’t have a lot of dates really and only had a few long-term girlfriends.  Back in those days I enjoyed going out, but then again money was not as much of an issue.  Going out now is not cheap.  Dinner and movies is crazy expensive, and with us on a strict budget of late I resign to not spend any money which means not going out.  This also means that trying to find new blood is not easy to happen if I don’t go out.  So not the best situation for my new blood search.  Even the few dating applications I have really have not been fruitful.  Coffee dates for me is pretty simple.  Coffee and good conversation.  And doesn’t involved a lot of income either.

So now that I have covered areas that I didn’t think I would get into in this blog, there is the main point I want to make.  Love, lust, jealous, envious and any other feeling that you feel still exists in any relationship.  There is no magic switch to turn it off.  I get envious still and even jealous at times.  I love more than one women and also care for many more.  The limited time I have with any of them I try to make the best of the time I have.  Feelings can never be turned off.  Understanding why you feel this way allows you to work through it.  We never intended to have other people we love, one of the rules we had when we first started.  As you can see our rules do evolve much like we both have.  Rules in the lifestyle are more like guidelines to ensure we are protected.  They are also flexible and can be modified as we each grow.

And we have both grown a lot over the past three years.  Opened up areas to explore and learn.  Fantasies that we have listed when we first opened up have been attempted.  I never would have expected to be here thinking about all that we have done.  Plus understanding how we survived it all.  There were bumps, hiccups along the way like any relationship has, but it is the strong bond and communication that we have that has kept us together.  We are stronger now then we were ever before and because of this we both have new friends in our lives.  For that I am truly grateful.